End of Chapter (1957)
Blurb:
My review:
As its title suggests, this humdrum tale is set in the literary world; to be precise, in a publishing firm, where the proof copy of a book of memoirs is tampered with by persons or persons unknown, and Millicent Miles, a popular novelist, has her throat cut. While Insp. Wright looks into the physical clues (alibis and keys), Strangeways investigates the pasts of the people concerned, all of whom are everyday people, as this is a workmanlike tale without flights of fancy. The murderer is obvious well before the end, his motive similar to the murderer's in The Beast Must Die (1938).